The Finale (5 page)

“Oh, shit!” Detective Rodriguez shouted as she watched gunshots erupt through the parking lot. The yellow flicker from the burst of the gun lit up the night like tiny fireflies. She knew she should have intervened when she first saw the situation get out of hand.

When she saw Halleigh aim her gun again at the other girl, she didn't hesitate to turn on her lights and swoop down over the lot. She sped up directly to the scene and hopped out of her car, her weapon drawn.

She aimed her well-trained shot at Halleigh. “Baltimore Police!” she yelled. “Put your weapon down! Now!”

“You dirty bitch! I trusted you!” Halleigh shouted at Tasha, who stood with tears in her eyes, and her hands in the air.

“Hal, don't do this. I didn't have a choice. She was going to kill me, Halleigh,” Tasha lied. “You have to believe me.”

“Halleigh,” Detective Rodriguez said calmly, “I need you to put down your weapon. One person has already been hurt. Let's make sure everyone else goes home tonight.” The detective could feel the animosity in the air.

“You were supposed to be my friend,” Halleigh cried, snot dripping from her nose. She was hysterical, and her hand was shaking. Everything inside of her wanted to dead Tasha where she stood.
She deserves it,
Halleigh thought as her finger played with the trigger.

“Hal, it's me. I'm your friend,” Tasha said. “You know I wouldn't do this to you unless I had no choice. She was threatening me.”

“Friend?” Halleigh shouted. “Bitch, you call yourself my friend? Yeah, Tasha, you're my friend, my ace boon coon, bitch! The same friend who helped Manolo manipulate me when I was just an innocent teenage girl. The same friend who sat by and watched me self-destruct on heroin and cocaine? Yeah, bitch, you're my friend, and if that's how we do, then you deserve every one of these bullets. They all have your name on them!”

It was obvious that Halleigh was letting out all of the resentment she'd held inside over the years.

“Halleigh, if you pull that trigger, then I have to pull mine. The first murder can be justified. It was self-defense ; you were protecting yourself. I saw it. But if you kill this girl, there is no turning back. You will be a murderer, Halleigh.”

Halleigh's resolve began to break, and she began to lower her arm, but just as she was about to drop the gun, she noticed the smile that came across Tasha's face. The smile enraged her. It was smug and arrogant, as if Tasha had never even expected her to be a threat. Halleigh lifted her arm and fired a shot into Tasha's face, erasing her smile forever. Then she immediately dropped the gun and put her hands in the air.

“Get on the ground! Now!” Rodriguez yelled as she kicked Halleigh's gun away. “Face on the concrete!”

She shuffled over to Toy's body and checked for a pulse. After feeling none, she felt for Tasha's. Both women were clearly deceased, and now she had to clean this situation up. She didn't want Halleigh in jail, and she definitely didn't give a shit about the two dead black girls lying beneath her feet. Her and her team wanted Malek. Now she had leverage to hold over Halleigh's head to get her to help them get him.

She put a crying Halleigh in handcuffs and then pulled her forcefully from the ground. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. . . .” The detective read Halleigh her rights as she pushed her toward the unmarked squad car and secured her in the back.

“Damn it!” Rodriguez slammed Halleigh's door shut. “Damn it!” she yelled again, hitting the trunk of the squad car. Now she had to figure out how she would clean up this mess she had allowed to happen.

Malek wasn't even an official case. It was one of their underground hustles, actually a favor to another drug dealer. Malek was competition, so he had to go, but things were going farther than they ever had before. Every cop bent the rules, but this was clearly breaking them. Two bodies would not be easy to cover up.

She trotted back over to the murder scene and discreetly picked up the murder weapon. She wrapped Tasha's dead fingers around it and shot the weapon once. She then did the same routine with Toy to ensure there was gun residue on the girls' hands so that when the coroner bagged and tagged them, there would be no suspicion of a third party being present. She definitely wasn't going to be the one to call it in. Someone would happen upon the bodies in the morning. For now, she had a hustler's wife to crack.

As Halleigh sat in the back of the squad car, being escorted to the police precinct, she knew Malek would be looking for her.
What have I done? My baby,
she thought. She knew she was on her way to prison for a very long time. She had shot two people in front of a police officer. She felt that today was her judgment day, and didn't think there was any way she was getting out of this one.

When they arrived at the police station, Rodriguez escorted Halleigh inside the building. Choosing to bypass processing, she took her to a private room where there were no two-way windows or video cameras. Whatever was said, only the two of them would hear, which was exactly the way Rodriguez wanted it.

She pulled out a wooden chair and sat Halleigh down.

Halleigh winced when her bottom hit the seat. Her hands were twisted behind her back, and the handcuffs were uncomfortably tight on her small wrists. “Can you loosen these cuffs?”

Rodriguez obliged, knowing it wasn't going to take the bad cop role for her to get Halleigh to see things her way.

Halleigh gazed at the floor silently, thinking about her fate.

Detective Rodriguez let Halleigh's imagination run wild and left the room to give the tension time to build. The more nervous, the more on edge, the more afraid she was, the better. This was the best type of informant to have, one that had something to lose.

Half an hour later, Rodriguez came back into the room. By this time Halleigh's eyes were red and puffy from crying. The left side of her face was swollen, and she had a busted lip from where Toy had punched her. Her bouncing leg let Rodriguez know that she was ready to crack.

Rodriguez pulled out a chair and sat across from Halleigh. “You're in a lot of trouble.”

Halleigh remained silent as she wiped her eyes with her hand.
I don't need this bitch telling me what I already know.
“I want a lawyer,” she replied between sniffles.

“Even if Johnnie Cochran arose from the dead to represent you, he couldn't get you out of this one. You murdered two people, Halleigh, in front of a police detective.”

“I didn't have a choice,” Halleigh responded drearily.

“You have one now.”

Halleigh looked up at the detective and shook her head. She knew the look in Rodriguez's eyes well. She wanted something from her. It was the same thirsty look that Manolo had given her, that Mimi used to possess.

“You being there tonight wasn't a coincidence, was it?” Halleigh asked as tears built in her eyes. She felt like this entire situation was a setup.

“I have been following you for the past few days, Halleigh.”

Halleigh balled her fists and put them to her forehead. She knew she wasn't crazy. All this time her intuition was right. Running, hustling, surviving since she was seventeen years old, she was tired, exhausted at this point. Now here was one more person looking to use her in some way.

“What do you want?”

“I want your boyfriend Malek.”

“Malek?” Halleigh whispered back almost breathlessly. It was like no one in the world wanted them to be together. There was always a situation threatening to tear them apart.
What the fuck is this? National fuck over Malek day?
“What do you want with Malek?”

“That isn't a concern of yours. All you need to say is yes or no. You can help me and my people gather our evidence against him. I want to know where his money is, what type of business he's into, and who he is doing it with.”

Rodriguez stood up. She put her hands in her pocket, revealing the gun and badge hanging off her belt. She circled Halleigh as she continued. “If you cooperate with us, I can make this predicament that you've gotten yourself in . . . disappear.”

“Disappear?” Halleigh repeated skeptically.

“
Poof!
” Rodriguez opened her hand as if she were performing a magic trick.

Halleigh's heart ached as she closed her eyes. She loved Malek. There was no way she could turn her back on him now. They were soul mates. They were meant to be together. Their destinies had always been intertwined, and she could never see herself turning on him. They had been through everything together. The good and the bad, they had experienced it all, and still found their way back to one another. There was always treachery around them, and now this woman wanted her to create deceit from within. Obviously Detective Rodriguez didn't know their story. She didn't know their Flint tale and was unaware of the type of love they shared.

“I can't,” Halleigh said. “I would never—”

“Why? Because you love him?” Rodriguez laughed as she removed a picture from a large manila folder she was holding. “We've been following him too, Halleigh. You want to know how he spends his days?”

The detective placed a picture on the table in front of Halleigh. It showed Malek going into the home of a young dark-skinned girl's brownstone. “You want to know how long he stayed?”

“About three hours?” Halleigh rolled her eyes.

Halleigh wasn't studying that photo. There was nothing that this cop could tell her about her own man. She knew the little broad in the photo was the girl who cooked up Malek's work. Malek had personally introduced the two and had sought Halleigh's approval before he even started doing business with the chick. Malek was always honest with her, and between them lay no secrets. She leaned forward and slid the picture back across the table.

“I'm not talking, so do what you got to do to me,” Halleigh stated, remaining strong on the outside, but on the inside she was crying out.

Detective Rodriguez had underestimated Halleigh's loyalty to Malek, but she had a trump card in her deck. She was sure her love for her son was much deeper than the one she felt for Malek.

“Are you really prepared to go to jail for life just to protect your boyfriend? Halleigh, what about your kid? Because if I turn you in, Halleigh, I can guarantee you will never see the light of day again.” Detective Rodriguez could see Halleigh's heart breaking as her mind raced. If the world wasn't so cold, she would've felt bad about what she was doing.

“I see a hundred girls like you every year, Halleigh. They stand by their drug-dealing boyfriends through it all. They give up their freedom, their children get sucked into the system, and for what? For nothing, Halleigh. Even if we don't get to him through you, we will get to him eventually. He's in love with the streets, and they all fall. And when he does, we will be there to catch him. So you might as well save yourself now. If you don't care enough about freedom, care enough about your child to make the right choice.”

Detective Rodriguez was plucking at the heartstrings of a good mother. As much as Halleigh wanted to be strong, the tears falling down her graceful cheeks were giving her away. This wasn't how things were supposed to go down. Their love story was meant to end in a happily ever after, not like this. No matter what decision she made, her son Malek Jr. would be losing one of his parents. Either she was going to prison for murder, or she was sending Malek in her place.

“Why are you doing this to us? I don't know nothing about some kingpin bullshit. There is no money, no cars, no nothing. We're not even from here. We're just trying to live.”

“You should have stayed wherever you came from then, Halleigh. This is Baltimore, and let's just say Malek has stepped on the wrong toes,” Rodriguez admitted, finally feeling bad for the love-struck girl.

Halleigh ended the conversation, refusing to speak to the detective any longer, but Rodriguez was patient and knew that time would crack Halleigh.

Hours passed before Halleigh realized she had been backed into a corner. She loved Malek and always would, but she couldn't see herself leaving her son. It was no longer just the two of them. She had their son to think about, and he needed her.

She stood and went to the locked door that held her confined inside the room. She kicked the door and yelled, “Rodriguez!”

Detective Rodriguez re-entered the room and waited for Halleigh to speak.

Halleigh put her hands on top of her head. She couldn't believe what she was about to do. “Aghh!” she screamed in agony as she closed her eyes tight. She wished that when she re-opened them she would be awakening from a bad dream. “I'll do it,” she said, barely audible.

“Excuse me?”

“I said I'll do it!” Halleigh shouted.

It was three o'clock in the morning, and all Halleigh wanted was to go home. Malek had probably lost his mind with worry by now, because he had been expecting her hours ago.

“I need to call him.”

Rodriguez leaned across the table. “You will tell him you were carjacked. We brought you here to file a police report. That's the story you will tell him. We will return your car to you tomorrow and say we found it abandoned somewhere.”

She began to break down the specifics of what she expected Halleigh to do, how she wanted her to record conversations that would help them take Malek down.

Halleigh barely listened. It was late, and she was overwhelmed, while exhaustion wrecked her. On top of that, her stomach was hollow from the blood on her hands.

“I can't do this right now. I said I'll do it, but I need to get my head together. I just want to go home,” Halleigh whispered.

Rodriguez was eager to get down to business and irritated that Halleigh wasn't listening.